Trump to name Ken Cuccinelli to immigration job as White House seeks 'tougher direction'

Tuesday 21 May, 2019

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is set to name Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general, to a top position at the Department of Homeland Security, bringing aboard a conservative who has been one of the nation’s most outspoken voices on illegal immigration.

Cuccinelli’s appointment was confirmed by a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an appointment that had not yet been publicly announced. The news was first reported Tuesday by the New York Times.

The Trump administration has been shaking up leadership at the Department of Homeland Security for weeks and the president has said he wants the department, which oversees the border as well as immigration enforcement in the rest of the country, to implement his policies more aggressively.

In explaining some of the changes at Homeland Security, Trump said last month he wanted the department to go in a “tougher direction.”

The White House official pushed back on reports that Cuccinelli would serve as the immigration “czar,” a position Trump created this year to coordinate the administration’s response to the flow of migrants arriving from Central America. Cuccinelli will be named to a DHS post, the official said, but not as immigration czar.

Cuccinelli was Virginia’s attorney general from 2010 to 2014. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2013.

Cuccinelli sided with Arizona in a 2012 lawsuit in which the Obama administration sued the state over a law intended to increase the power of police to enforce federal immigration laws. Years earlier, Cuccinelli drafted a legal opinion finding that police in Virginia could inquire about the immigration status of people that they stopped.